Meh~ Who need side objectives. I prefer more direct approach without all this trumpery. And the game is either normal or not. What means - Rules before Game, not Game before Rules.
As far as I understand, this will not affect the core gameplay, and these innovations are only made to give more originality and replayability to the campaigns.
The new civilizations will not even be playable in competitive games.
Yes, but (while this is my opinion) I don’t like the ancient civs at all and makes the campaign less replayable for me because they feel so arcady. They would be a lot better and the campaign would be a lot better if they were more balanced, and the DLC would have a lot more value because i’d play them in multiplayer& Skirmish games.
Chronicles: Battle For Greece is like an action movie. When they asked for player feedback a while ago, they asked how long missions should go on for. So I suggested approximately one hour in order to keep my brain from going to sleep. It seems like they listened to this feedback, because the missions in Chronicles are quick and action-packed. It’s a nice change from some campaigns which take 3-4 hours, and which have no scripted events in them.
BTW I posted 2 bug reports regarding the Xbox controls. Please have a look in the bug report forum if you’re interested.
I’m not sure if it’s my lack of Variable Refresh Rate, or just the Xbox Series S having poor performance in general! Seems like a big problem on a lot of games. Videos feel stuttery and often the gameplay too. I notice this more and more now that I’m 34. My eye balls are taking a beating.
Why was the Battle of Plataea not depicted as a campaign battle in the COG DLC??
There are plenty of reasons why some events are depicted over others, development time, budget and mission variety being key among them.
Many ancient battles would be pretty dull to play in AOE2 if depicted true to history. Can’t cover every battle in history and keep things interesting
Plataea was a critical battle. It was the main pitched battle in the 2nd Persian Invasion and the one that conclusively finished off the Persian ambitions to conquer Greece. It was a close battle too.
Let’s start talking about it the way we are doing with Persian Architecture meme
Aegospotami is absent too. I would have replaced that level in Cyprus for a battle of Plataea scenario instead. It would have the benefits of:
1- Explaining what happened to the massive army that “drank rivers dry”.
2- Mantain the narrative element of Pausanias being abusive to other Greeks, ruining Sparta’s attempts at being the leader of free Greece, thus Athens becoming the leading player in the region and gaining too much power, eventually kicking off the rivalry between the Delian and Peloponnesian leagues.
3- Deptics a more important event where Pausanias was present, instead of a minor raid that didn’t achieve much. If you want to show that the Greeks sailed very far to counter-attack the Persians, you still have the Byzantium scenario.
Also, there should have been another level between 20 & 21, where you inflict a final defeat on the Athenian navy. Perhaps facing the OP navy with all special techs from Themistocles’ part of the campaign, having side-missions to nerf the Athenians and get them on even ground, and getting an achievement if you beat them even with all the buffs. Imagine having a whole scenario where you build up a fleet, catch the enemy by surprise and then never use it again… It’d be cool to depict Lysander’s most famous battle.
I hope that in the future they will skip less important events instead of major battles, that way the campaigns would be closer to perfection.
Yes, I spent my time sending ambassadors to the temples on the left and right cities near of Naxos… then I can release the pressure from my initial base, otherwise it is impossible since you are practically surrounded by enemies and Artemisia does nothing unless you free the island to the northwest… and then I can focus on the enemies to the south, west and north…
Yes, let’s say they wanted to base themselves on campaigns from newer RTS like AoE 2 like WC3, AoM, AoE 3, SC2 and AoE 4… they don’t allow you to develop your base, since they give you secondary objectives for greater replayability and you need to do them in order to weaken the enemies… and the thing becomes much longer…
Yes, the next DLC is Chronicles of Macedonia and there you will have Philip II, Alexander the Great and the Diadochi (356-281 BCE)…and obviously we will have Macedonians, Ptolemies and Seleucids…
Because the protagonist of the Battle of Plataea is the Spartan king Pausanias and the Athenian campaign is that of Themistocles and Pericles… simply for reasons of the campaign in general and its narrative and also because Themistocles was not in Plataea… I’m not complaining, you have the Battle of Marathon and later in the campaign the Battle of Salamis and Thermopylae in the same mission… and then later on you jump to the Peloponnesian War…
Still doesnt make sense. We already played as Leonidas. I really think its a terrible excuse to do. Even changing protagonist in between is fine. It doesnt even explain the gap between Themistocles and Pericles. Its primarily the reason why Persians slowly picked the route of proxy war instead of doing a ful blown conquest again.
Yes, we play Leonidas but in the same scenario and only in the second half of it… the campaign is structured in three sections like this:
Achaemenids: Babylonian Rebellion and Ionian Revolt (522-490 BCE)
Athenians: Persian Wars and the first half of the Peloponnesian War (490-431 BCE)
Spartans: Second half of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE)
That is why we only play certain battles in a continuous order…
There isnt and shouldnt be a strict rule for packed civs by parts. In AOM and AOMT, it didnt necessarily felt bad when we switched between civs for the narrative. I dont like keep civ narratives packed at the cost of skipping contents tbh. Like Platea was an important part of the war and having that skipped breaks the story by a lot. It creates holes in the narrative and it removes a point for solid campaign series.
Plataea was a critical battle. It finished off Persian ambitions once and for all.
Sure it was important. But they are not going create a scenario to add it retroactively, the story cutscenes flow from one to the next. Maybe in the distant future there will be some historical battles dlc.
I’m sure other important battles will also be missed in future dlc, in favour of variety and pacing.
All they had to do was to make a scenario where you control both Spartans and Athenians. Simple. That was a poor decision to leave Plataea out.
@PeakHornet46539: “Why is the campaign structured badly?”
@MatM1996: “Because the campaign is structured badly.”
For the same reason, they have you play as the losers in Artemisium and Thermopylae, resulting in the single worst official scenario in AoE2. For some reason the campaign had to have this Achaemenid then Athenian then Spartan structure. It would be fine in a fictional campaign (e.g. the original StarCraft campaigns had this structure), but actual history isn’t always so neat.
Neither was Themistocles in the attacks on Cyprus and Byzantium, nor was Lysander present in the Sicilian expedition, and yet in-game they are present. In the end they place protagonists wherever they want. Plataea is too important to leave out and not depicting the battles leaves a big hole in the narrative (AKA what happened to the Persian army). It was also far more important than a little raid on Cyprus that didn’t matter in the long run.